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Strategic Folly

Sergio Rodriguera Jr. at PajamasMedia is quick to say that conservatives shouldn't simply be upset about Obama's economic policies. Just look at the disaster of a foreign tour he just went on:

The highlight of the president's Afghanistan strategy is the economic aid package of $1.5 billion a year for five years. Again, no oversight is given to our taxpayer dollars handed over to a Pakistani government on the verge of collapse. The president assembled his key national security advisers - his best and brightest - and this is the best they can come up with?

He never discussed an effective counterinsurgency effort against the Taliban. He never mentioned that the Taliban in Pakistan, run by Behtullah Mehsud (more brutal than Mullah Omar's Afghanistan Taliban), has called for attacks against our country. He makes no reference to the Taliban and al-Qaeda attacking our supply lines throughout the Torkham Gate between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Vice President Biden has said we are in Afghanistan to fight al-Qaeda yet he renounces fighting the Taliban, suggesting that these two things are reconcilable. He recently said on CNN that only 5% of the Taliban are extremists and 70% are persuadable. As usual, the media forgot to ask him where he got these numbers and what Taliban he was referring to.

I'd say that 70% are pretending to be persuadable, but are just being coy.

It's disturbing. While we're enjoying the popularity abroad by virtue of a new administration, that'll wear off as soon as we start having to make hard decisions. And it seems, based on responses to big threats, we're not yet taking those hard decisions seriously.

Read more from Sergio here.

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More Blog Posts by J.P. Freire

http://spectator.org/blog/2009/04/15/strategic-folly

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